Romancing the Novel

My mother has proposed that I swallow my pride and actually make money as a writer.

That is, she thinks I should write a romance novel.

She is right that romance novels are big money makers. When we were on the phone today, she told me the name of the best-selling author in the US, and it wasn't a name I recognized. Why? Because it was a romance novelist.

Romance novels are apparently hot sellers, and on top of that, romance publishers usually aren't as snobby as other publishers seem to be. They take quite a bit of work from new, unpublished writers, and sometimes from people who read romance novels and then decide to write them themselves.

The problem? I have never read a romance novel. I don't even know what they're like. Don't they involve, like, sex and stuff? Would I have to write sentences like, "She gazed down through her raven hair, allowing her fingers to graze his throbbing member"?

Also, I was trained as a poet. While it says "English" on my transcript, I pretty much majored in poetry at Vassar. I'm a poet— that's what I do. I like metaphor, and I like complicated meter, and I like delicacy— the quietness, the coyness of language. Could I really write a romance novel?

Of course, as I just said, I've never read a romance novel. It could be that I'm terribly biased, and that my assumptions about these novels are unfair.

So this is where you come in. Have you ever read a romance novel? Do you think I could write a romance novel? Would you read a romance novel I wrote?

And, most importantly: what would my romance novel pen name be? Because if the people from my writing classes at Vassar ever found out I'd written a romance novel, I'd have to kill myself in shame.

I'm leaning towards Vanessa Hart. Or maybe MacKensie Firefly.